


these moving walls

by GreyMichaela



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, he's all and he's more, these guys have it, they kill each other kind of a lot at first, whatever the opposite of a meetcute is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25456096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyMichaela/pseuds/GreyMichaela
Summary: Sarwa is ladling stew into bowls and she hands the first one to Yusuf, who passes it to Nicolo and takes a drink from the now filled flask. “Is he your lover?” she asks.Yusuf chokes on water and Nicolo pounds his back, eyebrows peaked with concern.“I—” Yusuf pauses, wiping his streaming eyes.Sarwa looks at him, nothing but mild curiosity on her face.Yusuf glances at Nicolo. The firelight paints his cheekbones flickering gold, his eyes hooded and sleepy in the dim light.“I don’t know what he is,” Yusuf finally admits, still looking at Nicolo.Nicolo’s mouth quirks and he takes another bite of soup.“He looks at you like you belong to him,” Sarwa says.Nicolo keeps eating, oblivious to what they’re saying.“I think he belongs to me too,” Yusuf whispers.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 170
Kudos: 3565





	these moving walls

**Author's Note:**

> So this movie fucked me up, who's with me?
> 
> I have another scene/story in mind but this stands alone. I have a lot of thoughts and emotions about these two, and I hope I did them justice!
> 
> (Side note: I know, they stop dreaming of each other when they meet. Let's just pretend it stops after they decide to stop KILLING each other, how about that? Okay good, moving on.)

It’s not climactic, the first time they meet. The skies don’t open, a single ray of light doesn’t lance down and backlight either of them in a heavenly glow, no angelic chorus descends.

What happens is this—the enemy plunges his sword through Yusuf’s stomach even as Yusuf twists, brings his scimitar up, and slices the soldier’s throat with the last of the strength in his failing arms.

The man staggers back and goes down hard, hands up to his throat trying desperately to hold the skin together, but Yusuf isn’t looking at him. He’s sliding to his knees in the blood-soaked mud as his countrymen battle around him, screams of dying men ripping the air.

Yusuf’s limbs feel heavy, thousand pound weights hanging from his arms. Somehow, he gets one bloody hand around the sword in his gut and pulls. He has to readjust his grip when the blade slices his hand and it slips in the blood, and it takes about a thousand years, but at long last it slides free and falls from his nerveless fingers.

His vision is fading around the edges, sparks dancing when he blinks his heavy eyelids. The soldier he killed— _who killed him too,_ Yusuf thinks bitterly—had fallen on his side. His eyes are open and sightless, lips parted, one hand flung out as if in supplication. 

Yusuf would spit if he had the energy. Instead he can feel himself tilting sideways, the ground rising up to meet him. The impact drives the last of the breath from his lungs. 

The last thing he sees is the enemy’s dead eyes, a peculiar pale green staring right through Yusuf’s soul.

He comes awake with a convulsive heave that propels him up and sideways. Yusuf gets an elbow under himself before he falls on his face and stays like that for a minute, panting for air and struggling to get his bearings.

The sun is going down, he realizes when he lifts his head. The battlefield is empty of living beings, birds already settling to feast on the still-warm corpses sprawled around him. 

Yusuf pushes himself to his knees, expecting the pain in his stomach to lance through him again, but nothing hurts. _Nothing,_ he realizes, not even the knee he’d twisted two days before dodging a heavy charger, nor the shoulder he’d wrenched helping a wagon out of the mud. The various aches and pains of his body, before a near constant hum in the back of his mind, are all gone, wiped clean like a slate.

Yusuf lifts the leather breastplate and touches his shirt. He can see the rip in it from the enemy’s sword, but the skin underneath is smooth and unblemished.

_Impossible._

He looks up, searching for another living soul, but there’s no one. Just him and several thousand dead soldiers and horses. 

The soldier he killed sits bolt upright and Yusuf goes over backward in shock, falling on his ass and scrambling to get on his feet.

He grabs the nearest sword but the other man isn’t trying to attack him. He’s feeling at his throat—his smooth, unmarred throat—mouth open and chest heaving in shallow, rapid pants.

When he turns his head and looks at Yusuf, it feels like a piece of a puzzle locking into place. Their eyes meet and the soldier’s widen.

“I killed you,” Yusuf says.

There’s no comprehension on the other man’s face. He says something in what might be Italian—Yusuf isn’t sure—and rolls to his feet in a smooth, fluid movement.

“No, _no,”_ Yusuf says. “You’re dead, you _died,_ I _killed_ you.” And he lunges before the other man can react.

The sword slips between the man’s ribs easy as cleaving through butter and comes out dripping red. He grabs at Yusuf’s wrist, green eyes huge with shock, but his grip is already weakening. Yusuf twists away easily.

“Stay dead this time,” he says, and spits on him as the soldier topples back onto his side.

He doesn’t stay dead.

They come face-to-face three days later, battling for possession of a small town with few residents but several deep wells. They’re all thirsty, so thirsty Yusuf thinks his tongue has shriveled up in his mouth. His eyes sting and burn fiercely when he blinks. All he can think of is the taste of water, sweet and clear. It’s become a burden to pick up each foot, but when he hears shouting in Italian ahead of him, warning of the enemy almost upon him, he finds the adrenaline somewhere to flatten himself in a shallow dip in the terrain. 

As a scout, Yusuf is ahead of the army, almost to the first huts, built with mud and straw. If he can get between them, he can make a stand until the rest of the troops reach him. Maybe. Assuming he’s only facing a small squad and not an entire battalion. And if he can get across the patch of open ground in front of him. 

_Too many ifs,_ he thinks, and heaves himself up into a stumbling run.

He’s almost there, so close he can almost touch the first hut, when the arrow thuds into his chest.

Yusuf’s legs buckle and he goes down in a sliding, graceless sprawl. 

Boots appear in his peripheral vision, square and sturdy. A rough hand on his shoulder pushes him onto his back.

Yusuf stares up into the stunned face of the man he killed twice, coughs blood, and dies.

It goes on like that as the war drags on, grinding and miserable. Yusuf dies, and wakes, and dies again. He kills the green-eyed man in increasingly inventive ways, growing desperate. It’s like they’re drawn to one another by an invisible force, and no matter how they try to sever the knot that cleaves them together, they end up in the same place. Again and again and again.

Yusuf’s throat under the enemy’s boot as the air is crushed from him, the last thing he sees those cold green eyes as the darkness draws in.

The soldier down with a rock to the back of the head, Yusuf long past caring about honor or morals at this point, only wanting him to _stay dead._

The soldier dies easily, just like any man. Just like Yusuf. Sometimes with a fight, a choked off gurgle, the death rattle of his lungs failing to draw air. Sometimes with barely a noise, folding in on himself like a woolen doll as he crumples to the ground.

And always, always, he’s back. Staring at Yusuf across the battlefield. Yusuf could find him blindfolded by now, he thinks, by the sound of his footsteps, the slow, measured breaths he takes right before he sinks into battle stance and beckons Yusuf at him.

Yusuf always obliges. Always attacks with everything in him, rage and desperation and terror blinding him to all but the need to make the world make _sense_ again.

As bad as it all is, and Yusuf has the sinking feeling it’s very bad indeed, what’s worse are the dreams.

They’re fragments at first, meaningless scraps of things that come and go, wisping away like gossamer when he tries to clutch at them.

It’s weeks before the first dream lasts more than a split-second. The soldier’s face, _Yusuf’s soldier,_ he thinks of him in the deepest part of himself where no one else will know, blurs and resolves, as always those green eyes the first thing Yusuf sees. Then the hooked nose, the disdainful mouth, the tangled light brown hair and messy beard.

Yusuf knows him, now. Knows him inside and out, how he’ll dodge a slash, how he’ll parry a blow, the way he’s weaker on his left and compensates by being snake-fast and deadly on his right. Knows he’s absolutely without mercy on the killing field, that he never gives up.

 _Nicolò,_ he says in the dream, and wakes up with a start.

The next time Yusuf kills him, he says it. “ Nicolò,” he says, half-convinced he’s losing his mind, or long since lost it, and the man’s green eyes snap wide in shock. He coughs and dies, and Yusuf is left staring down at him.

In his dreams that night, Nicolò comes to him. His eyes are sad, mouth drooping with exhaustion. 

“Why won’t you die?” Yusuf asks him. 

Nicolò touches Yusuf’s face. It’s an answer of sorts, and Yusuf closes his eyes and lets Nicolò explore with careful fingers. 

Nicolò kills him the next day, a knife in his back in close quarters. 

Yusuf wakes on the battlefield and stares up at the sky for a few minutes, thinking. Finally, he drags himself upright. One of the cooks speaks Italian, he thinks. He heads for the wagons, a plan forming in his mind. 

Nicolò is there in his dreams again. His hands are warm and solid as he touches Yusuf’s stomach, trails fingers over his sternum. Yusuf shivers and it takes him a minute too long to realize he’s searching for scars, for proof of his deaths, a record of all the ways Nicolò has killed him. He touches Yusuf’s throat, turns him around and prods gently at his back.

He won’t find anything, but Yusuf lets him look all the same.

They don’t speak.

He doesn’t leave, the next time. He couldn’t say what keeps him there, but he’d chased the man until they ended up in a small clearing, away from the rest of the fighting. There’s no one else nearby, not within at least a mile, when he throws his sword overhand and watches it sink into Nicolò's back, watches Nicolò's knees give out, watches him fall forward. Lie still.

 _One more time,_ he thinks. _Once more and then. Then we see._

So he crouches by the body, pulls the sword free and cleans it, and he waits. Counts the breath in his own lungs, feels the sun beating down on his bare head, rehearses the words in his mind.

It doesn’t take long. A handful of minutes, if that, before the first twitch of his fingers, the first convulsive intake of air and spasmodic movement that pushes him up and over onto his back. 

He opens his eyes and stares up into Yusuf’s face. There’s no surprise in his expression, only resignation and exhaustion.

“I think,” Yusuf says in very shaky Italian, and _that’s_ definitely surprise on the man’s face. “I think I am tired of killing you.”

The soldier’s mouth works. He takes a breath, then another one. Yusuf doesn’t move, waiting to see what he’ll do.

“Yes,” he finally says in Arabic that’s a little better than Yusuf’s Italian. “My name is Nicolò.”

Yusuf wants to laugh.

“I know,” he says. “Yusuf.” He points at himself.

Nicolò nods, looking not at all surprised.

A fraught silence falls between them. Yusuf has been fighting for three days with only the very occasional snatched nap and hunk of bread to keep him going. He’s filthy, hungry, and exhausted, and all he wants is a bath and a soft bed, or even a blanket on the ground. Nicolò doesn’t look much better, his cheeks gaunt and dark circles under his eyes.

Yusuf rocks to his feet and holds out a hand. Nicolò props himself on his elbows and looks at him for a minute. Then he reaches up and takes it, letting Yusuf pull him upright. His hand is callused and warm, bigger than Yusuf’s, grip strong.

Standing, they’re nearly eye to eye, close enough Yusuf can feel Nicolò's breath on his cheek. This close, his eyes are even more spellbinding. 

Nicolò breaks the moment by taking a step back and turning to look for the pack he’d dropped when Yusuf had caught him. It takes a moment of rummaging, but he comes up with a package of waxed paper, wrapped with rough burlap string. On his knees in the grass, he holds it up and grins at Yusuf.

Yusuf feels like he did when Nicolò's boot was on his throat, no air in his lungs, all thought driven from his head. He stares like a fool until Nicolò's grin slips and he opens the package. Inside is a piece of cheese and half a round loaf of bread.

Yusuf’s mouth waters and his stomach growls, and Nicolò's smile comes back. He beckons, and Yusuf steps forward, moving hesitantly across the grass until he can sink cross-legged next to him.

Nicolò tears the bread in half and hands him a piece, and then breaks the cheese and does the same thing. He lifts his portion, one eyebrow quirking, and says something in Italian too rapid for Yusuf to catch.

Yusuf just shakes his head helplessly, and Nicolò smiles at him again. 

It’s soft and hesitant and a little cautious still, but Yusuf smiles back this time. He remembers the flask on his belt and unhooks it. There’s still more than half the water left, and he holds it out to Nicolò, who takes it, eyes lighting. His fingers are warm when they brush Yusuf’s, and Yusuf takes a bite of bread, unable to look away.

Neither of them speaks the other’s language, not really, but somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. When Nicolò stands, after they finish eating, Yusuf stands too. They look at each other for a minute, and then they walk away from the battle, shoulder-to-shoulder through the clearing to the other side.

Yusuf lets Nicolò drop behind him when they reach the trees. He spares a moment to wonder if the next thing he feels will be a dagger in his back, but in the next breath he dismisses the thought. Nicolò isn’t going to kill him. Not anymore.

They walk the rest of the day, not entirely sure where they’re going. After about an hour, they find a road, and strike out in the direction that’s away from the fighting. Yusuf is exhausted and Nicolò clearly isn’t faring much better, judging from the way his head is drooping and how he stumbles occasionally.

Yusuf calls a halt when Nicolò trips and falls against him. Yusuf manages to break his fall but not stop it and they both end up sprawled in the dust of the road, breathing hard. Nicolò's half on top of him, and he pushes himself up and off, saying something that sounds apologetic.

Yusuf could laugh. “How many times have we killed each other, and you’re apologizing for knocking me down?” 

Nicolò cocks his head, uncomprehending, and holds out a hand to help him up. Yusuf takes it and they stand quietly for a minute, catching their breath.

“We need rest,” Yusuf finally says. “Look.” He points. There’s a shabby hut in the distance, a slightly larger barn rising behind it. “Maybe they’ll let us sleep in the hay,” he says, and starts walking in that direction.

The farmer’s wife meets them at the door, a child clutching her skirts, eyes big and round.

Yusuf bows formally to her. “Good evening,” he says, and then bows to the little girl too, whose eyes somehow get bigger. “My companion and I have been traveling most of the day. We were hoping we could do some chores for you in exchange for food and the chance to sleep in your barn.”

The woman eyes them suspiciously. She’s in her mid-forties, sun and hard work having taken their toll. 

But finally she nods. “Fix the fences by the barn. You’ll find tools inside it.” She steps back inside the house and closes the door, leaving Yusuf and Nicolò on the other side.

They spend the next hour repairing the fence. A gangly teenage boy appears as the sun goes down, a small flock of sheep on his heels. He stops dead when he sees Yusuf and Nicolò, then proceeds carefully past them and into the barn. When he comes back, without the sheep, he eyes them both again and sidles toward the house.

Nicolò asks him a question. When Yusuf blinks at him, Nicolò makes a drinking motion, then points at Yusuf’s flask.

Yusuf grimaces. “Empty,” he says, and upends it to demonstrate.

Nicolò reaches for it as he says something else, pointing at the house and then the flask.

_Refill._

Yusuf nods and Nicolò heads for the house, flask in hand. Alone, Yusuf sets a cross rail in place, then trudges back to the barn for another one. They’re almost done, and he’s thinking longingly of _harīda,_ or anything that will fill his belly and quiet the gnawing of it.

A scream shatters the air and Yusuf jerks his head up. He drops the rail and bolts for the house. Skidding around the corner, he stops as three Christian soldiers look up at him. The boy from earlier is sprawled in the dirt. Two of the soldiers are holding the farmer’s wife as she struggles and sobs, and the third is pulling his sword out of Nicolò's stomach. Nicolò is on his back, head turned and eyes open, unseeing in death, the flask beside his hand dribbling water onto the dirt. His sword is half-out of its sheath.

Something sharp and cold splinters in Yusuf’s chest. He draws his sword, dagger in his other hand, and cuts down the first man before he’s done withdrawing the blade from Nicolò's stomach, then spins on the other two, who’ve let go of the woman to pull their own swords.

Yusuf attacks, quick as a pit viper. He ducks under the blade of the near one, slipping eel-like up next to him to bury his dagger in the soldier’s armpit. He falls and Yusuf dodges a wild swing from his companion, who’s far stronger than he is skilled. He rains blows down, driving Yusuf backward step by step. He’s huge, with height and reach on him, if not agility, and Yusuf is too busy defending himself and watching his footing to try to gain the upper hand.

It’s probably less than a minute that it continues, but it feels like an eternity as Yusuf tries to stay alive, waiting for an opening until the man goes rigid and drops his sword. There’s a blade protruding from his chest by several inches, Yusuf realizes.

The soldier’s mouth opens and closes, and he goes down in a disjointed sprawl, revealing Nicolò behind him, blood on his face and lips peeled back with fury. He asks Yusuf something in a tight voice.

“I’m alright,” Yusuf says. 

Something in Nicolò's bearing loosens, and he takes a step toward him.

Yusuf catches movement out of the corner of his eye. He throws himself forward as Nicolò dodges. His swing nearly decapitates the soldier he’d stabbed, the impact shuddering up his arms as the blade lodges in bone.

Instead of trying to wrench it free, he lets it fall with the body and turns back to Nicolò.

“Are _you_ alright?” he asks urgently.

“He tried to stop them,” the woman says. She’s crouched next to her son, who’s blinking and dazed, but otherwise unharmed. Her hair has fallen from its braid and she looks younger, closer to their age. She wipes the tears from her cheeks. “He—I thought they killed him.”

Yusuf turns back to Nicolò. The cut on his forehead has already healed, leaving streaked blood behind, but Yusuf touches the skin anyway, needing to be _sure._ Nicolò leans into his touch, eyes steady, and lets Yusuf reassure himself that he’s really not hurt. 

“Come inside,” the woman says. “You can bathe and I’ll feed you.”

Her name is Sarwa, she tells Yusuf as her son pulls a huge wooden tub from the corner and he and his sister pick up the buckets from the door and head for the well. Her husband joined the army ten months before, leaving her with their two children and a farm too big for them.

“He’s dead,” Sarwa says as she stirs the pot hanging over the fire. Her hair is still hanging loose, and her tone is matter-of-fact. “He would have come home by now if he wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Yusuf says, hating how empty it sounds. Nicolò is sitting beside him, close enough Yusuf can feel his body heat, listening to their conversation with his head tilted.

Sarwa shrugs, as if she’s been too emotional already. “I’m going to sell the farm. We’ll go to my father’s house.”

Her children are hard at work hauling buckets of water in to fill the tub. Sarwa takes the stew off the fire and swings another pot, this one full of water, over the flames to heat.

Nicolò is eyeing the water longingly. 

“It’s not hot yet,” Sarwa says. She’s ladling stew into bowls and she hands the first one to Yusuf, who passes it to Nicolò and takes a drink from the now filled flask. “Is he your lover?”

Yusuf chokes on water and Nicolò pounds his back, eyebrows peaked with concern.

“I—” Yusuf pauses, wiping his streaming eyes. 

Sarwa looks at him, nothing but mild curiosity on her face.

Yusuf glances at Nicolò. The firelight paints his cheekbones flickering gold, his eyes hooded and sleepy in the dim light. 

“I don’t know what he is,” Yusuf finally admits, still looking at Nicolò.

Nicolò's mouth quirks and he takes another bite of soup. 

“He looks at you like you belong to him,” Sarwa says.

Nicolò keeps eating, oblivious to what they’re saying.

“I think he belongs to me too,” Yusuf whispers.

They sleep in the barn that night, nowhere near enough room in the hut for all of them, but Sarwa insists on giving them each a set of her husband’s clothes after they bathe.

“Better you look like farmers than soldiers,” she says. “I’ll wash the cloak and burn the rest for you.”

The hay is soft and smells sweet, wild and grassy. Yusuf moans as he sinks into it. When he opens his eyes, Nicolò is standing at the edge of the pile, looking unsure. He’d shaved after his bath, and Yusuf thinks he probably shouldn’t like it as much as he does, the way the silvery moonlight glances off the sleek planes of his face. 

Yusuf raises his eyebrows, half-encouragement and half-dare. It takes another few seconds before Nicolò goes to his knees and lowers himself until they’re facing each other, only a foot of space between them.

Nicolò sits up again briefly, just enough to shake out the blanket Sarwa had given them and drape it over both of them. Then he lies down again, head pillowed on his arm.

They lie quietly, watching each other’s faces in the dark. The only light is a sliver of moon through the hayloft above them. For the millionth time, Yusuf wonders what Nicolò's thinking. He wishes desperately that he could ask him. 

The sheep stir and bleat sleepily to each other below them, the musty smell of wool and lanolin filling Yusuf’s nose. 

Nicolò says something. It’s soft and slow, and Yusuf can hear the exhaustion tugging at him. When he lifts a hand and touches Yusuf’s mouth, he’s trembling with the effort.

Yusuf wraps his hand around Nicolò's. “Sleep,” he says. The bones in Nicolò's wrist feel impossibly fragile, pulse beating rapidly against Yusuf’s fingers. They fall asleep like that, hands linked between them.

—

Nicolò wakes first. The cold light of pre-dawn is filtering in through the small window above them, and the sheep are stirring, making soft noises below. There’s an arm over his waist, he realizes in the next second, and soft breath on the back of his neck.

Sometime in the night they’ve ended up with Yusuf tucked along Nicolò's back, as if he’s guarding him from any danger that might come from behind. He’s warm and solid, breathing slow. 

Nicolò lies quietly for a minute and thinks. Twenty-four hours before, he certainly hadn’t envisioned this happening. But ever since he’d woken up in the clearing with Yusuf crouched next to him, he hasn’t been able to predict anything that’s occurred.

 _He’s everything you hate,_ a voice whispers in the back of his head. _He’s evil, degenerate, a godless heathen._

But Nicolò had seen the raw terror on Yusuf’s face yesterday after they’d fought the attackers. Felt the care in his fingers as he touched Nicolò's forehead, satisfying himself that Nicolò truly was unharmed.

Whoever—whatever—this man is, he isn’t evil. And he’s bound to Nicolò as surely as Nicolò is bound to him. 

He wonders briefly why that doesn’t panic him more, but just then Yusuf lifts his head. Nicolò glances over his shoulder and their eyes meet.

Yusuf’s eyes are sleepy, his hair flat to his head on one side. His lips curve when he sees Nicolò's awake, and he says something in Arabic, his voice even softer and huskier than usual.

It tugs at something deep in Nicolò's belly. “Good morning,” he says, and sits up.

Sarwa’s son is opening the barn door, taking the sheep out and talking to them in a low voice. Yusuf sits up and stretches, popping his back and groaning in satisfaction.

The little girl knocks on the ladder and pops her head through into the hayloft. She grins, displaying several missing teeth, and rattles off a phrase in Arabic far too quick for Nicolò to follow. 

Yusuf smiles at her and replies, and she disappears again, skimming back down the ladder and scampering off. Yusuf looks at Nicolò and says something.

Nicolò shrugs. He wishes he’d learned more than ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘my name is Nicolò’ in Arabic, but it wasn’t like he’d had much opportunity to practice.

Yusuf mimes eating and points at the house, then repeats a word.

Ah. 

“Yes,” Nicolò says in Arabic, and Yusuf’s face lights up.

Nicolò clears his throat and stands. He follows Yusuf down the ladder and to the house, where Sarwa greets them with two loaves of bread wrapped in cloth, still warm from the oven. She and Yusuf talk in quick, hushed tones, and Yusuf looks up after a minute to catch Nicolò's eyes. There’s worry in the pinch of his brows. 

“What is it?” Nicolò asks, knowing Yusuf won’t understand him.

Yusuf points at Nicolò's pack, then out the door. The message is clear. _We have to go._

Sarwa kisses Yusuf’s cheeks and then turns to Nicolò and does the same thing as he bends so she can reach, feeling faintly ridiculous. She cups his face and says something that startles Yusuf into a coughing fit, his cheekbones going dusky pink.

Then they’re out the door, Nicolò's pack slung over his shoulder and an extra flask of water strapped to Yusuf’s hip.

The food and the night’s sleep has done wonders for both of them. They make good time on the hard-packed dirt road, but Nicolò can’t help but notice the way Yusuf keeps checking the road before and behind them. When it curves or crests a hill, Yusuf touches Nicolò's arm and makes him wait until he’s satisfied himself that no one else is in sight.

Nicolò watches him as they walk. He’s never really thought about Yusuf’s appearance before, for a long time only thought about how to most effectively kill him. But now he’s finding himself noticing little details, like his hyper-mobile eyebrows and how they broadcast every emotion he’s experiencing, the muscle and sinew in his graceful hands, the tight curl of his ink-black hair and close-cropped beard. It takes effort but he wrenches his attention back to the road. They’re in the middle of a grove of trees, and he appreciates the momentary shade. 

They don’t get any warning. 

One minute they’re turning a corner in the road, and the next, they’re in amongst a group of soldiers coming the opposite direction, their horses shying and snorting at their unexpected appearance.

The leader shouts, drawing his sword. “Hold!”

 _Italians,_ Nicolò realizes as he dodges a horse’s swinging rump, but it’s already too late. They’ve seen Yusuf.

Blades ring as they’re unsheathed. Yusuf has nowhere to go, his back against Nicolò's as the horses circle them.

“Filthy Moor!” someone shouts. He raises his sword and Nicolò flings his hands out.

_“No!”_

The leader throws a fist up and the soldiers freeze. 

“He’s just a farmer,” Nicolò says desperately. “Don’t hurt him.”

_“ Nicolò?”_

Nicolò stiffens and turns to the commander as he swings a leg over his horse’s neck and slides off its side to land with a thump.

“Giovanni?”

“ Nicolò di Genova, is that really you?” Giovanni pulls his helmet off and tucks it under his arm. His fair hair is dampened with sweat, blue eyes still cold beneath the grime of the road. “We thought you dead! Why are you _here,_ and traveling with a Moor?”

“He was just, ah… showing me the way,” Nicolò says, mind spinning frantically. He wants to push Yusuf behind him, keep himself between him and the soldiers, but a casual acquaintance wouldn’t be worried about his companion’s safety. He glances at Yusuf, who’s holding very still. There’s coiled menace in his posture, a snake waiting to strike, but his face is utterly blank.

Nicolò swallows hard and turns back to Giovanni. “I—got separated from my squad. I was trying to find my way back. Am I going the right direction?”

Giovanni laughs, slapping him on the shoulder. “Not even close! You’re going the opposite way. Come, my horse can carry double.”

“Oh… that’s alright,” Nicolò hedges even as Giovanni gestures him toward the horse. The five other soldiers watch, impassive behind their armor. “Just tell me the direction and I’ll find it.”

“Nonsense,” Giovanni says flatly. “Get on the horse.”

Nicolò plants his feet. “I—” He glances at Yusuf again, who’s watching impassively, but Nicolò can still read the worry in the tension of his shoulders. “What about my friend?”

Giovanni’s lip curls and he jerks his head at one of the soldiers, who lifts his crossbow and shoots Yusuf in the chest.

 _“No!”_ Nicolò screams as Yusuf stumbles back a step, looking down at the red blooming over the undyed muslin as if in disbelief.

“One less on the battlefield,” Giovanni says dismissively, and several of the soldiers laugh. “Let’s go.”

Yusuf’s knees buckle and he collapses, mouth open as if he’s trying to say something, one hand reaching toward Nicolò before it falls and he slumps sideways in the dirt.

Tears blind Nicolò's vision, and he’s moving before he realizes it, grabbing Giovanni’s sword from his belt and running him through with it in almost the same motion. The other soldiers shout. Nicolò dodges a rearing horse, tip of his blade flickering up to slice the rider’s leather cuirass and lodge under his ribs.

The rider falls, already limp, and the horse bolts. Nicolò pulls his dagger and readies himself, rage and terror and something deep and unnameable stirring in his blood, howling for death, for vengeance, _kill them all for touching Yusuf._

“Filthy fucking traitor!” one of the soldiers screams, and charges.

Nicolò ducks under the swing of his sword, fury lending him speed, and hurls himself upward. He catches the soldier’s arm and they tumble off the rearing horse together, hitting the ground hard. Nicolò slices his throat with his dagger before the other man can roll over. He’s on his feet in the next breath, sword in his right hand and dagger in his left. 

Twenty seconds gone, three dead. Two more. 

The horses are milling nervously at the edge of the road as the soldiers argue.

Nicolò blinks away the blood in his eyes. There’s a cut on his forehead, or there was. Yusuf hasn’t moved.

“Come on!” Nicolò challenges them. “Afraid to take me on?”

“He’s just one man!” one of them says.

“That’s Nicolò di Genova, you _fool,”_ the other spits. “Die if you wish, but I mean to live!” He spins his horse, slamming his heels into its sides. It bursts into a gallop and the hoofbeats quickly recede in the distance as Nicolò and the remaining soldier eye each other.

“All this over a Muslim?” the soldier asks, gesturing at the bodies on the road.

“All this and more,” Nicolò spits, and hurls his dagger.

It lodges in the soldier’s throat and his eyes bug out as he goes rigid, clawing at the hilt. His horse sidesteps fast and the soldier slides out of the saddle like a sack of wheat. He hits the ground with a clatter of armor and the horse snorts hard and dances a few more feet away.

Nicolò doesn’t wait to see if he’s dead. He runs for Yusuf, falling on his knees beside him. The crossbow bolt is still protruding from his chest, and Nicolò pulls it out and hurls it as far away as possible.

“Yusuf,” he manages, his voice cracking. “Please, don’t go already. Come back to me. Yusuf, _please.”_

Yusuf’s fingers twitch. He sucks in air and begins to cough. Overwhelmed, Nicolò folds forward, resting his forehead on Yusuf’s chest and blinking back the relief that threatens to choke him.

After a minute, Yusuf stirs, and Nicolò straightens to help him into a sitting position. Yusuf surveys the carnage, eyebrows going up, then looks at Nicolò, who holds his gaze. Yusuf rolls to his knees and touches Nicolò's face. He says something and it sounds unbearably soft and fond, his palm against Nicolò's cheek and his eyes so warm, and Nicolò can’t stand it any longer.

He cups Yusuf’s face in both hands and presses their mouths together. Yusuf’s lips part under his own and he makes a surprised noise in the back of his throat, but he’s not pulling away, he’s kissing back just as hard even though Nicolò must taste like blood and smell like a charnelhouse. Nicolò's never felt more alive, kneeling there in the dirt surrounded by bodies, kissing the breath from the man God’s given him, and when he finally, reluctantly, stops to breathe, he finds himself unwilling or unable to pull away.

So he rests their foreheads together, letting his breathing steady and slow.

“Yusuf,” he whispers. 

Yusuf’s lips quirk upward and he rolls his head sideways to press another quick kiss to Nicolò's mouth. “ Nicolò,” he murmurs, matching his tone, and Nicolò can’t help the breathless, disbelieving laugh.

“Have to teach you Italian,” he says, and kisses him again. Yusuf laughs against his mouth, fingers in Nicolò's hair, and Nicolò lets himself fall into it willingly, unable to stop smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, that line of Nicky's is a nod to Joe's in the van.
> 
> [I'm on Tumblr](http://greymichaela.tumblr.com), but I'll warn you that I'm 90% hockey. But hey, if hockey and The Old Guard are your jams, come talk to me!


End file.
